Cardboard and Pie
by madasarabbit
Summary: A brief car scene between Booth, Brennan, and an irritable cell phone I originally wrote in my Dictionary Antics oneshot series but then decided to put out there on its own. Pie, people! What more excuse do you need to read a Bones fanfiction?


This was originally one of the oneshots I wrote in a very short series called Dictionary Antics, but since I stopped at two chapters of oneshots I decided to split them up and see how they fended for themselves. Now, please keep in mind that this is actually one of the first bits of fanfiction I've ever written. Actually, I wrote another Bones piece before it called Heat, but I accidently deleted it over the holidays and still haven't found it. Sad, sad. But still, plase R&R if you can.

Oh, and fun fact: I had been writing these with random words I pulled from the dictionary. This one was pie, so I wrote this thing up before everyone else was going off on their own pie pieces.

Not that I'm bitter, or anything,.

Not at all.

* * *

"You're kidding me, right? A _cardboard_ _warehouse_?" Booth was incredulous. If only he'd chosen this to be a time when he purposely didn't answer a call from Cullen. As much as Booth loved his job, sometimes he just wished it would all go away. Especially when he was in the middle of a celebratory post-case meal with Bones at the diner, arguing the merits of pie.

"Not even close to kidding, Booth. It's a coupla' miles away from the Maryland/DC border. Head south." Booth was about to nap his cell phone shut when Cullen threw in a last-minute order. "And bring your Bone lady too. This is looking nasty."

Once Brennan and him were safely in the car, breaking several speed limits to get to the crime scene, Booth let out an enormous sigh.

Bones shot him a sideways glance. "What's wrong? You can't possibly be upset that we had to go in the middle of another Pie Debate." This time he'd been trying to force her into trying a slice of the Banana Cream Pie, one of the Royal's specialties. "It's not my fault if you have some sort of an obsession with pie."

"It's nothing. I was just supposed to get Parker tonight, and God knows when we'll get out of there. I don't want to call Rebecca to tell her this, either, since this is the second time in a row that this has happened." _Shit, I should probably do that now._ "And for your information, I don't have an _obsession_ with pie. Why can't you just give it a chance?"

Now adamant, Brennan pressed on. "As I have told you time and time again, Booth, I simply find it too sweet. Why can't you just leave it alone?" She looked out the window. "Aren't we supposed to go left?"

"No backseat driving, Bones."

"I'm in the passenger's seat, _Booth._ And that sign clearly stated to turn left to enter Maryland State." Now, though she would never admit it to Seeley, she was really starting to enjoy her side of the arguing. Nothing gave her much more satisfaction than when she won a good altercation, so long as it didn't result in any long-term damage. Suddenly, the car took a sharp U-turn. "Hey!" she exclaimed. "Slow _down_. There are other agents at the crime scene, you know."

Booth didn't reply. Silence stretched over the SUV for a few more minutes.

"You should probably call Rebecca," Brennan remarked, breaking the brief bout of quiet.

Booth sighed for the second time. She was right, but he never liked to call Becca to make changes in his plans with Parker. She always followed the same pattern with these painful calls: acted suspicious of his reasons for why he had to rearrange plans, got upset at something or other, brought Parker into it all as a guilting tool, threatened to cancel all other plans that had been previously laid out, gave into his relentless objections, and hung up. Every. Single. Time. And he hated Bones to have to hear it.

"Yeah, I probably should," he grumbled, and grabbed his phone from the cup holder it had been so unceremoniously dropped in when they jumped into the car. He hit number seven on the speed dial, held it down until the phone made a whiny sound of protest, indicating that the call was going. _Please don't pick up, please don't pick up, pleas-_

"Hello?"

_Damn._

"Um, hi. Rebecca."

"Seeley." Her voice was cold. For a generally sunny person, Rebecca always seemed to know when a steely demeanor was appropriate. "Are you calling to tell me when you're planning on picking up Parker this evening?" she asked. A ploy, Booth was sure. Rebecca always also seemed to be the queen of patronizing questions.

"No, Becca. I'm sorry, but I just got a call from Cullen and-" Booth glanced at Bones in the rearview mirror. Her expression was sympathetic, but there was something else there. She was thinking about something.

"Right, Seeley. Right." She sounded sarcastic, an he couldn't truthfully say he was surprised. Out of all of his old girlfriend's positive qualities, on of her most negative was jealousy. She was suspicious almost to a point of paranoia, and as wonderful as their time together had been before she refused to marry him, her tendency to overexxagerate the most simple of situations was one he could never miss.

He paused. How could he head this off? The two of them had to be at the crime scene in twenty minutes. "I promise you, I couldn't get out of this. Some homeless woman found a dead body stapled to the wall in a cardboard warehouse in Maryland, and Cullen personally requested that Bones and I be there." His tone was steady, nonthreatening. How could she find fault there?

"Are you kidding me? _Stapled_ to a wall? _Cardboard_? Of course s_he's_ there with you, your _partner_. Well, would you like to talk to Parker? Tell him why his daddy isn't going to see him for another week? I mean who _knows_, Seeley, the way this has been going, it could be another _month _before you see your son again."

Booth rubbed his forehead. "Please don't do this Rebecca. I really need to get to that warehouse. I promise you I will call him tomorrow morning to say hi. And I will pick him up Monday night, per our agreement. Don't upset our son out of spite. I feel terrible enough about this already."

He heard a sniff from the her line. "Fine then. See you then."

_Click._

"Sorry you had to hear all of that, Bones. I hate doing this to Parker, but a job's a job."

"It's fine, Booth, _really_. It's not your fault, anyway," she said. She still looked thoughtful. A pause. "Meat pies."

"Come again?" Sometimes that woman was so random!

"You seem to think I hate all pies. But I've always enjoyed a good meat pie." She looked over at Booth, who was now at least 10 miles per hour under the highway's speed limit.

_Oh. _"Where the hell can you find a meat pie in D.C.?"

She named a few obscure restaurants. "Technically, a meat pie is just as qualified for the title of pie as something sickeningly sweet like _cherry_ or _apple._"

They f_inally_ pulled up to the warehouse. Cullen's directions had worked. Before turning off the ignition, Booth looked over at Brennan like he sometimes looked at the jumbles of bare bones that lay strewn across the autopsy tables in the lab. "_Sickening_? Are you kidding me?"

She looked blankly back. He pulled the keys out of the ignition and laughed. "Haven't you ever heard of Sweeney Todd?"

"I don't know what that means."


End file.
